


Routine

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-22
Updated: 2003-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:14:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1633424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick already knows what he needs to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Routine

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Asael

 

 

Routine  
December 22, 2003 

Disclaimers: Not even close to mine, dammit. 

Spoilers: None, really. Assume a vague sense of current Nightwing canon. 

Summary: Dick already knows what he needs to. 

Ratings Note: NC-17. 

Author's Note: Written for yuletide. I'm pinch-hitting, Asael -- I hope this works for you. 

Acknowledgments: To Jack and Weirdness Magnet for timely, _timely_ beta. All remaining mistakes, ambiguities, and just plain weirdnesses are entirely my own fault. 

* 

You can get used to anything. 

Dick has known this for years, and hadn't needed Bruce to tell him -- not that he ever would have. Spoken the words. 

Batman seemed to take it as a lesson given by the universe itself, which was perfectly in character, and fine, besides. 

Because... 

There's something about it, about falling into the rhythms of whatever fucked-up behavior has become habit _lately_ , whatever fucked-up notion has become truth. It's the sort of thing that could make a man smug. 

Dick thinks he'll settle for 'comfortable.' 

He smirks, (mostly) to himself, and strips. 

There's a rhythm to this, and rules, too. 

Last week at this point of the routine, he'd kept most of the Nightwing suit on; tonight he strips it off entirely. Tucks it away and does his post-patrol stretches naked. 

This isn't new, or even all that unusual -- Dick really _likes_ living alone -- but tonight is... special. 

He laughs to himself. 

Used to anything, right. 

There are _some_ differences to it, like a more careful placement of his own body within the room's space. Places he can and can't look. 

There are adjustments necessary, because this thing is never the same twice. It couldn't be. 

Eventually, he's got it. The line of his back is not quite parallel to _that_ window; not exactly turned away, more presenting a three-quarter view. 

The lights are on -- including the ones he doesn't tend to use even when he _is_ here at night. 

The space between his shoulder blades... 

It's not an itch, quite. 

It's a tightening of muscle, and heat that doesn't have anything to do with light, or even warmth. 

He flattens himself to the floor between his own outstretched thighs, and exhales. The stretch is basic, but useful. He has too many scars to get arrogant about the kid stuff -- there's a _reason_ why everyone knows this one. 

And it ups the ante. 

Exposure. 

Nights like these, he has to _work_ for flexibility, for calm. Work against his reactions, innate and trained alike, to being watched. 

The circus had been different. 

A Grayson is _not_ the same as Dick, and the ring has nothing to do with his apartment. This is, he thinks, as it should be. 

The skin of his lower back tries to crawl when he curls his calves under and rises up onto his knees. He doesn't let it -- yet. 

I can feel you, he wants to say. 

He knows it's heard, anyway. 

He shifts down on his haunches as slowly as he can manage, and isn't entirely sure whether or not to be grateful for the fact that this is just as easy as it always was. On the one hand, he doesn't _want_ any more scar tissue pulling against his muscles and range than he already has -- he's just not that screwed up. 

On the other hand, eventually he'll have it _anyway_ , and he'd like to be used to that idea, or at least already have the body-knowledge he needs to compensate. 

He goes into the prayer stretch, palms flat to the floor again, and... yeah. 

Difficult in an entirely different way. 

_That_ window has a direct line of sight to his ass, and he's breathing harder now. Because, yeah, actually, he _is_ asking. 

Demanding, teasing, begging. All of the above. 

It isn't that he's remotely unfamiliar with the use and abuse of body language. 

It's just... 

He's never going to get _him_. And he _isn't_ used to that, yet. He never will be, and a part of him likes it that way. 

It's not that he _likes_ being bitter and frustrated -- the day he does is the day he signs himself over for the long-overdue voluntary commitment, because, really, there is such a thing as going too far. 

It's that the bitterness and frustration help to _define_ the line. Shape and inform and solidify it. 

Dick will go _exactly_ this far. And it isn't his problem that Bruce won't come near to meeting him halfway. 

It doesn't stop the hunger, or even ease it. 

That's the way it should be, too. 

He stands, feeling the burn in his calves and quads, and gives serious thought to his shoulders. They need work -- he hasn't been one hundred percent since Slade's bullet -- but the question is what _kind_. The things that swimmers tend to do to their bodies as a matter of course... 

Dick's in good shape. He's in _excellent_ shape -- this is just another fact. But some of the showier stretches and rolls are just plain risky. 

Nightwing can't afford to get knocked out of commission because Dick fucked up while _stretching_. 

Besides, he doesn't really want to consider the kink aspects of rolling his shoulders out of joint. 

Not even for his audience. 

His body is warm, his muscles as loose as they'll get tonight. 

He doesn't look over his shoulder. 

And, in a way... 

It's almost the same as being Robin had been; as being Nightwing still can be, those times when he has a partner for a night, here or back in Gotham. He doesn't _have_ to look over his shoulder, because if something happens back there, he will, at the very least, have warning. 

The analogy only fails when he considers intent. 

Those eyes out there, in the dark, are on him. 

And waiting. 

He closes his eyes against the rush of it, against the shadow that slams up against the wall of (un)necessary distance and never gives him enough to make him more than just hungry. 

Angry and wild and fucking _hard_. 

He's not making it to the bed. 

He braces one hand against the wall and wraps the other around his cock. At this angle, no one outside that window can see more than the lines of his back. He pushes it, putting more weight on his hand and leaning _in_ until he can feel that his shoulder blades are shifting more obviously. 

Spreads his legs and goes for it, all of it -- not just his body on display. _Here I am_. These are the nights when every fantasy is available, even if every motion is not. 

Batman breathing down his neck, gauntlet cold and too-slick around his cock. 

Batman bracing him, bracketing him, surrounding him -- body and personality. 

Bruce's bare hands on his chest, his abdomen, touching him exactly the way he watches, and he _is_ watching, no matter how tightly that cowl is on. 

Bruce wants this, wants _him_. Every muscle, every scar, every inch of skin he's never touched. 

Dick forces himself to close his eyes and pivots, falling back against the wall and touching himself everywhere he can reach with his free hand. This doesn't do a damned thing for him -- he's just as cock-oriented as anyone else. Or. 

It _wouldn't_ do anything for him without the assumption of an audience, the _fact_ of one. 

And the way he doesn't have to say: 

This is how I want you to touch me, right now. 

This is exactly what you could do to me, if you had the balls to even let me open my _eyes_. 

He twists his own nipple too hard, hard enough to make himself gasp. There are rules for this, too -- he's not going to show anything fake, no matter how hot it is to imagine Bruce getting off on his expressions. 

He squeezes his eyes more tightly shut and rakes short-trimmed nails down the center of his chest. _That's_ something -- it makes him jerk, makes goose-flesh rise on his arms and his thighs. 

He pumps faster and bites his lip, because it's _hard_ to keep his eyes shut. Bruce knows that -- he _has_ to know that. He fucking _trained_ Dick to watch, to _need_ to watch, and just because Bruce is still the master and fucking champion at it doesn't mean this isn't... unnatural. 

It's a question he won't ask -- how much do you need this to be wrong for me? Do you think that makes it hotter? 

Hotter is not knowing the answer, any of them. Hotter is the endless speculation, incoherent and image-intensive on nights like these. 

Bruce pushing too hard, too fast. Bruce spreading Dick's thighs before he can do it himself. A bite instead of a kiss. 

A growl instead of a moan. 

"Oh, fuck, I _want_ you," he whispers to the air and lets himself drop into a crouch, throwing his head back and opening his eyes. The ceiling is blank and harmless -- nothing he _wants_ to see, but. 

Just... so long as he can keep his eyes open. 

He swallows and squeezes his cock in his fist, does it again because it makes him breathe harder. 

Grabs for his balls and -- the angle is _wrong_. He's too close to the wall for anyone to be behind him, and he needs this, needs hard hands, big hands -- _fuck_. Forces his eyes shut again and rolls his head forward, staring at the window through closed eyelids. 

"Bruce." 

It won't get him anything, it never will, but -- 

" _Bruce_." 

Faster. Harder. 

" _Take_ this," he says, and comes all over his fist, rocking a little on his heels until he can breathe. Think. 

_Feel_ something other than his own cock and the not-enough settled low in his belly. 

Feel -- He's still out there. 

Right. 

"You're pushing it, Bruce," he says, standing. Eyes closed, body moving. The insulation around that window isn't the best. Dick can feel the cold before he's really close. 

He can't smell anything but his own sweat and come. 

He presses one palm -- the clean one -- to the glass. "I'm gonna break the rules one day. You know this." 

He licks and sucks the fingers of the other hand clean. Waiting. 

Feeling for what he isn't going to get. 

He nods to himself. For himself. 

"Leave." Nightwing is as much in the muscles of his face as the tone of his voice. 

It's colder when he does, when he goes from unseen beyond the glass to just -- gone. The different quality of cold that's always meant Dick's alone. 

Nothing to shiver at, though. 

There are better things to be uncomfortable about. 

end. 

 


End file.
